Sailing: Pamlico Sound, NC

Nadi and Natalia recently purchased a Catalina 25 sailboat. They invited me along on a trip with their 18 month-old daughter, Talya, and Natalia's sister, Marta. We drove down to Oriental, NC on Friday evening. I went ahead and drove down separately in the Jeep in case I decided one day of sailing was enough. Natalia had made reservations at the Oriental Marina & Inn. We found the hotel to be quite spacious with two bedrooms and a combined kitchen living room area. After dropping of our bags Most of us went to the hotel restaurant for a couple of beers before bed.

On Saturday morning we got a bit of a late start. Both Nadi and I set the alarms on our phones for 8am but since we knew the alarm in the room was set for 8:30 we went back to sleep. The alarm in the room never went off and we ended up waking up at 9:30. Nadi went to get coffee for us, while the rest of us enjoyed bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. After breakfast we packed sandwiches and snacks in the cooler and headed down to the SailCraft marina where the boat was waiting to be picked up after having the bottom repainted.

From SailCraft Nadi and I motored over to get some diesel and to have the waste tank pumped out. I thought we did quite well with only one minor collision during our 5 minute journey. Meanwhile Natalia, Marta, and Talya drove the car around to meet us at the boat's new dock. After finishing with the refueling and the pump out it was another short trip by motor to the boat's new dock at Whitaker Creek Yacht Harbor. The day was really heating up at this point and Natalia took Talya into the air-conditioned yacht club for her lunchtime nap while Nadi, Marta and I readied the boat for sailing by rigging the jib and the mainsail and pumping out the bilge. With the work out of the way we joined Natalia at the yacht club and ate the lunch we had packed.

With our hunger satiated, we headed back out into the heat and boarded the boat. We cast off from the dock and motored out of the harbor. Apparently our skill as a crew was improving as we made it all the way out of the harbor without incident. Once out of the harbor we hoisted the sails and proceeded towards... well, towards nothing. We didn't really have a plan so we just sailed north and south repeatedly as these were the most favorable directions of travel given the direction of the wind. Talya amused us all by throwing the sunscreen overboard. This allowed us to practice our man overboard drill. We didn't go so far as to actually throw the horseshoe float to the sunscreen as it seemed to be treading water just fine, but we did turn around and retrieve it.

Natalia and Nadi aboard their new boat

Toward the end of the trip the wind died down and we decided to be a bit brave and sail into the harbor. This resulted in a bit of excitement as when we finally ended up dropping the sails the amount of maneuvering room we had was quite small. That said, I'm happy to report that it went off without a hitch and I imagine we even looked like we knew what we were doing. With the sails down we motored the last little bit to the dock and tied the boat up for the night.

We went back to the hotel and freshened up a bit. Then we walked down the road to the Oriental Steamer Restaurant & Tavern. Something about spending a day on the water just makes me hungry as I managed to consume the following:

• one margarita


• one quarter of a lobster ravioli appetizer


• 2 pieces of shrimp wrapped in bacon and glazed with maple syrup


• at least 3 pieces of bread with butter


• one pasta with feta, olives and chicken entree


• 3 diet (heh at this point why bother with diet) cokes

At this point I was so full it hurt, but I went ahead and ordered a piece of 15 layer chocolate cake to go, in case we all wanted dessert later. We walked, or should I say waddled, back to the hotel. Once we got back to the hotel we could hear the alarm going off, apparently we had managed to set it for 8:30 pm instead of 8:30 am. I was so full I couldn't really move so I just lay on the bed for a bit to digest. Once I was able to stand again we watched some TV, switching back and forth between the Olympics and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Nadi and Natalia had never seen MXC before and they seemed quite amused.

The next morning we headed back to the boat. The wind had picked up quite a bit over night so we went ahead and reefed the mainsail before heading out of the harbor. Once we got out of the harbor we decided it might be a bit too exciting with both the mainsail and the jib up. We unfurled about 50% of the jib and immediately we were going faster then we managed any time the day before. This made for a more exciting day of sailing. As an unexpected bonus the wind was coming from a different direction today so we were able to sail along the coast and see some parts of the sound we had not seen the day before. As we sailed we could see a few other sailboats out. We were glad to see that most of the other boats were running with highly reefed sails, so we didn't feel quite so much like wimps for only running a portion of the jib.

underway with only the jib up

After quite a bit of fun we headed back to the harbor. On the way back we unfurled the rest of the jib and really got moving. I think we managed to go over 5 knots at a few points. Since there was so much more wind today we went ahead and put down the sail before getting into the tight part of the channel. We motored back to the dock and then went to have lunch at the harbor in downtown Oriental. We finished eating just in time as the rain started coming down. The rain continued throughout our entire drive home. In fact we had better weather during the weekend than we would have had we stayed in Cary. Cary received quite a bit of rain from the remains of hurricane Gaston while at the beach we escaped most of it.

Sailing turned out to be rather enjoyable. It would definitely be fun to go back sometime with destination in mind. You can see our GPS track from Sunday here.

More pictures from the trip are available in the photo gallery.

Nadi also wrote an account of the trip. Check it out at the trailersailor bbs.